DEVIL’S ISLAND

Evening Star, Issue 20033, 26 November 1928, Page 9

DEVIL’S ISLAND

DREADED PENAL GQIONY WORST SPOT IN THE WORLD France’s most dreaded penal colony, Devil’s Island, has long figured in the limelight as the ■ worst spot in the world. A writer in ‘Reynold’s Illustrated News ’ tells the story, as follows : So terrible were the conditions there that in 1924 the Government investigated a series of articles written by M. Albert Lourdes, and it was proposed that this and other similar convict settlements should be abolished. This, however, was not carried into effect. It Was thirty years ago, when the scandal of the unfortunate Captain Dreyfus had reached its culmination, that horrified nations learned that a convict settlement existed in French Guiana, where men rotted away and died under conditions infinitely worse than the disgraceful days of Botany Bay and Van Dieman’s Land. ESCAPE OF EDDIE GUERIN.

In Colonial France—that land where “ Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” is the national watchword—there still exists that unspeakable convict colony in French Guiana, where every year thousands of men are transported never to see their native country again. In 1905. however, a notorious American bank robber, Eddie Guerin, made his escape from the penal settlement, and after undergoing almost incredible privations succeeded in getting back to New York, where the story he told sent a thrill of horror throughout the entire world.

Guerin, captured in Paris, was sentenced to transportation for life for robbing the American Express Company of £40,000. He told a graphic tale of how he had served two or throe years of his imprisonment on the lies Royale and St. Joseph, at the end of which period he was removed to the mamlaud. from which lie ultimately made his escape across the river Maroni into Dutch Guiana.

THOSE WHO TRIED AND FAILED.

The escape of Guerin ■ was made in company with two other men, both of whom had disappeared by the time ho ultimately succeeded in reaching civilisation. For many weeks these three convicts blindly fought their way through the dense forests and swamps of Dutch territory, famishing for want of food, maddened by the bites of insects, and nerve-wracked at the thought of the armed guards who were following them. In the course of their journey the fugitives came across dozens of skeletons clothed in rotting French convict uniforms. They were tho bones of men who had tried and failed where only Guerin succeeded.

Native Indians, on the alert for the reward which the French Government offers for the capture of escaped prisoners, hunted' them lor weeks without avail. The time came when Guerin succeeded in reaching Paramaribo, the capital of Dutch Guiana, but ho was the only man to do so. His two companions had perished on the way TWELVE MONTHS OF SUSPENSE.

The story of what happened to Guerin when he subsequently went'to England via America is one of the greatest dramas in tho history of crime. Arrested in London on an extradition warrant, he lay in Brixton Prison for over twelve mouths wondering whether ho was doomed to return to tho Jiving hell of Devil’s Island 1 .

The Lord Chief Justice of England, tho late Lord Alverstone who sat with a divisional court to settle whether or not Guerin should bo extradited, may have thought that any man who could escape from such a Gehenna was entitled to his liberty. At _ any _ rate, Guerin went free, and is still alive to tell the talc.

A long time elapsed_ before another njan succeeded in proving that a bold and resourceful desperado could get away from tho island. Eugene Dicudonne, the Parisian, who, it was alleged at his trial, had been a member of tho gang led by the famous Jules Bonnet, also escaped across tho frontier, and after months of unbelievable hardships made his way into Brazil, from which country ho eventually returned to Franco.

PARDON AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS. Here, again there came another great scandal in France. Dieudonne had. served fifteen years in the settlement. » He_ was proved innocent of the charge* which led to his transjmrtetion, and granted a free pardon He is living in France to-day, a broken man, riddled with malaria, an illuminating example of the French penal code of to-day. Now comes the case of Dr Dougrat,

who, with two companions, got across the river Maroni in a hollowed-out tr®o trunk which bad been procured from a Chinaman living on the banks of the river.

The prison guards are very reluctant to venture far into the swampy hinterland of Dutch Guiana There are no roads and no villages. Poisonous snakes abound in the dense undergrowth; wild animals remorselessly follow on tracks of human beings, knowing full well that sooner or later there will bo a meal for them. Nor does the Dutch Government welcome these pursuits. The authorities in Paramaribo make a pretence of searching for any man who is notified_ as having escaped, but rarely indeed is a convict recaptured and sent back, “ ISLAND OF ’THE DOOMED.”

It is a strange life led by these men for whom the laws of France have ordained the terrible punishment of transportation- to a pestilential climate lit only for the native Indians to whom all Guiana —French, Dutch, and British —originally belonged. Three or four times a year the convict- ships leave Marseilles crowded to suffocation with the victims of the savage French penal code. Nor arc they all Frenchmen. After leaving Marseilles the ship proceeds across the Mediterranean to French Morocco, whero another consignment of men bound lor the Island of the Doomed are taken aboard. They are mostly Arabs who have committed crimes against the French rule. With a barbarity which no other nation in the world now practises, these unfortunate Arabs are dumped down in the convict settlement, far away from the land of their birth, mutely wondering whether Allan will ever be good to them and put an end to the privations and sufferings that are their daily lot. The ships that go across the Atlantia to the islands carry as many as a thousand convicts at a time, and it makes one wonder whether wc are really living in the twentieth century that such a state of affairs should be possible. Soldiers aimed to the teeth guard the prisoners ceaselessly, and huge steam, pipes lead into the holds where theiuon are, so that, by the turning of a tap, the prisoners can be scalded to death if they should attempt to mutiny. In small batches the prisoners are allowed to come up on deck for exercise, and if, as frequently happens, a man should jump overboard to put an end to hi§ torture no attemp is made to rescue him. The guards merely shrug their shoulders, murmur something about the drowning man being much better off whero ho' is, and continue their patrol. Fighting by night and gambling by day, they plough their way across the ocean, and, after something like a three weeks’ journey, arrive at the Hes du Saint, whore they are put ashore at cither St. Joseph or Royale. whore the “ lifers ” serve a probationary period before they are permitted to go to the mainland.

SHARK-INFESTED SEA.

There is little or no possibility of escape. The shark-infested Carribean Sea effectively deters tho braves of men from trying to get to the coast twenty five miles away. Innumerable have been the attempts to launch improvised craft which might succeed in reaching land. None of them has succeeded. Bodies washed up on tho lonely shore have told the tale of what has happened to them more plainly than words. There is really nothing for the convicts to do on the islands. Most of them are put to road-making, and go through a pretence of doing some work. But in actual fact it is nothing short of a tragic farce, enlivened now and again when a maddened prisoner, desperately, socking a way out of his misery, mutilates himself and is sent into hospital* There are frequent killings on tbs islands, which is not to bo wondered at in the cosmopolitan community ot Frenchmen, Germans, Italians* Americans, Arabs, and negroes. Twenty years is the period a mart must serve before ho can hope Jor his release; but even then he is not permitted, in iito case of a man serving a life sentence, to return to Franco. Ho is turned loose, given a plot of land, and told that he may settle down, and, if he likes, marry one of tho native women.

Hound about Cayenne, the administrative city of French Guiana, there arc thousands of these ex-convicts to bo found, most of whom arc engaged in menial occupations. They are not permitted to engage 'in any official work,nor are they allowed to leave the colony under any pretext. Nevertheless, dozens of them do'manage to getaway, although they live for evermore under the risk of being sent hack to Guiana if they should he found in France. Nobody has ever completely made known to the outside world tho terrible conditions that exist in French Guiana to-day. There was a great outcry in Franco shortly after tho full facts of. Captain Dreyfus’s life became known which made the Government promise a thorough reformationof tho entire colony. But nothing has happened. That death-dealing road which leads from Cayenne to Maroni is still being built by the convicts, who spend tortuous days and nights hacking their way through the jungle making the famous La Route, which will one day be finished.

Punishment is swift and sure for the men who offend against the prison laws. Underneath tho barracks at Maroni there are dark, deep dungeons whore men rot away in chains, fed only with bread and water until their tortured bodies can stand no more.